City of Divine Nectar

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We set off for Madurai early in the morning, maybe even before ten o'clock.

We drove through unremarkable country at first and I started to occasionally nod off. There was level ground on either side, largely bare with a few trees. As we drove on I started to see odd eructations of rock like giant pimples dotting the landscape. They were on our left side as we drove and formed a chain gradually gettng closer to us before we drove past the last of them.

Much of the land seeemed uncultivated and waste but there were occasional fields and a few shacks and villages. We passed through a small town called Ambillikai and I amused myself by trying to guess when were going to be able to overtake the slow moving traffic there and when not. After Ambilikai there were more fields and soon I saw mountains ahead of us. There were more villages and towns along the way and in one I saw a giant white bullock pulling a really tiny cart. He probably didn't realise he was pulling anything. At Oddanchatram, the road curved to the left.

Now the scenery grew more dramatic, with tall coconut trees alongside the road and the cloud topped mountains ahead. On either side were fields of green and brown grain. For a while the road, which had been good so far, became almost impassable. But then it recovered and we were running smoothly again.

We passed through Dharmapatti and I noticed that many houses bore a sign looking like an open palm, and sometimes the letters IP. At first I wondered if this indicated that the resident of the house was a palmist, but there were too many for this to be plausible. I think they were possibly political symbols to do with elections.

I saw some more cedar like trees near a temple on a hill.

Just before reaching another mountain the road turned right and became a very good highway leading directly to Madurai. My hotel was directly opposite the railway station in West Veli Street. The hotel, although only boasting three stars, has some good facilities including a small gym. There was a sign on the ceiling of my room indicating the "qibla" or direction in which Muslims should face whilst praying so as to direct their prayers towards Mecca. In a drawer, instead of the Gideon Bible, was a copy of the the Holy Qran. They had a clever system whereby if you pick up the phone in your room, the television automatically mutes and also a switch to operate a speaker so that you could hear the TV in the bathroom.

Madurai is an ancient city. Some claim it as the oldest inhabited city in India. It is peculiar among southern Indian cities in that it has never changed its name, nor has it abbreviated it (perhaps Mad was felt to be derogaratory and Maddy too effeminate). However, it may have changed its location and experts differ as to whether the present city of Madurai stands where the most ancient city called Madurai did. The present city, though, is certainly old. It is centred on a great temple dedicated jointly to Shiva and his wife Parvati. However, because of the southerners' love for changing names it is dedicated to them under their aliases as Sundareswar and Meenakshi.

The old city, at least, is centred on the temple in a quite literal manner. The temple is surrounded by concentric roads forming squares. There are five of these in all, surrounding the temple to north, east, south and west. The outermost of the concentric roads mark the course of a former moat that was dried up by the British. So, like Chiang Mai, Madurai used to be a city enclosed by a rectangular moat. My hotel, on West Veli Street, is on one of the roads that used to be part of the moat and is, thus, on the outskirts of the old city.

The city gets its name, so it is said, from an incident of oneupmanship, or oneupgodship, between Lords Vishnu and Shiva.

Lord Shiva was intently meditating and, as he did so, drops of divine nectar formed on his head. Lord Vishnu knew that if only twelve such drops should form Shiva would become the most powerful god. He wanted to prevent this at all costs. And already seven drops had formed. Something had to be done. Vishnu formed a beautiful naked woman and sent her to dance and exhibit herself in front of Lord Shiva to distract him.

But all three of Lord Shiva's eyes were firmly closed and he was not tempted to open them. The erotic music that accompanied her dancing also did not distract him from his deep meditation.

It is forbidden to touch one who is meditating but, despairing, the woman did so finally distracting the ascetic god. He roused himself and, as he moved, the drops of divine nectar fell from his matted coils of hair to the earth below. One drop fell on the place now called Madurai (or just possibly on the place which was previously called Madurai). At any event, that is a story about the city's name. The other drops fell on other cities around Tamil Nadu that are sacred to Lord Shiva - such as Trichy.

After lunch I set off for the temple, which is within easy walking distance from the hotel, you just turn left down West Veli Street and then left again down Town Hall Street and that leads directly to the West Gate to the temple and a great gopuram, one of twelve. You can leave your shoes outside here and go into the grounds, but to get to the door to the temple itself you have to walk right round to the eastern side, This is where you would expect the main entrance to be. And so they are. Uniquely, this temple has two main entrances, one for Meenakshi and one for Sundareswar (Parvati and Shiva).

As I walked round towards this, I passed a shrine to Lord Ganesh (of course they don't call him Ganesh here, that would never do, they call him Pillaiyar) with a separate statue of his mouse facing it, in the way that Nandi often faces Shiva. At first I thought it was a Nandi, but when I looked properly I could see it was a mouse! It is unusual, I think, for Ganesh's mount to have a separate statue like this.

Ganesh is, of course, part of the Shiva family being the son of Shiva and Parvati (elephant head from Shiva, rest of Ganesh from Parvati's bath scrapings). The gods honoured in this temple all form part of this family. The others are Murugan, the couple's other son, who has different names everywhere and Vishnu. You might not expect Vishnu to be part of the Shiva family set up. I didn't. But according to the people of Madurai, Vishnu was Parvati's brother. In fact, when Shiva and Parvati married they say that Vishnu was coming to give her away, but unfortunately arrived too late (Indra held him up). A nearby temple is dedicated to him to celebrate this event.

The Parvati aspect of Meenakshi was born as a Pandya princess. When she was born she had fish shaped eyes and already had no fewer than three fully developed breasts. A swami predicted that the extra breast would disappear when she met her destined husband. On a journey to the Himalayas she met Shiva and the breast disappeared and so they were married. Her fish eyes remained, but were considered a mark of beauty.

Meenakshi, like other gods and goddesses, is associated with a particular creature. Hers is the parrot. This surprised me at first as parrots are not birds particularly assocaiated with India, though they do live here and more may have done so in the past. In any case gods have no obligation to follow logic and Meenakshi could have chosen a dodo had she been so inclined. As it is her statues show her looking a bit like a female Long John Silver or Lambajan with her parrot on her shoulder.

I paid a guide Rs150 to show me around the temple. He told me that many parrots were bred in the temple and were trained to repeat Meenakshi's name.

The gopurams, which are the most visible signs of the temple from the outside are painted in garish colours. However, this wasn't always the case and they were first painted in the early 1950s. Since then, they have had to be repainted every twelve years or so and each painting takes about two years to complete.

This temple, like some others, boasts a 1,000 pillar hall. This one, apparently - I didn't count - has 985.

The pillars throughout the temple are superb. Many of them are made to look like mythical beasts of have statues of gods and mortals incorporated in them. There are amazing muscal pillars, made of stone, where you can gently tap one part and hear musical notes if you place your ear to a distant part of the same pillar.

There is a large tank with a golden lotuus at its centre. There is a much larger tank still, almost as large as the temple itself, outside, but I didn't visit it.

I received a blessing from a brahimin and from the temple elephant and also put some ash from a Ganesh staue on my forehead. The brahmin gave me a long garland of golden flowers to wear about my neck. It was so long and I am so short that it almost touched the ground as I walked. Once outside the temple I draped it around a large statue of Ganesh in a shop to which my guide took me "because it had a viewpoint".

There are some really interesting seventeenth century paintings in the temple telling the story of Shiva in a sort of cartoon format.

The temple is dedicated to Shiva and Parvati jointly (to use the more familiar names). An interesting custom is that the statues of each, which usually stand in their respective sanctums (sancti?) are, every night at nine o'clock, taken to each other to spend the night together. The priests sing lullabies to them. Then, next morning at five o'clock they put the statues back as they were.

Also, once every year, the two idols are married to each other once again.

As well as a temple elephant and the temple parrots I was told that the temple kept temple camels for the processions, but they were in the stables when I was there. The temple was being got ready for an upcoming festival and there were banners and bright decorations all around.

I went to see the Thirualai Nayak Palace, or what remains of it. What now stands is largely a restoration but it was very beautiful and housed an interesting museum of sculptures. Nearby was St Mary's Roman Catholic Cathedral, which was brightly decorated both without and within.

I passed another one of the "golden statues" dressed with flowery garlands. I wonder if ordinary people put these on the statues out of respect for the persone being honoured or if the councils empmloy someone whose job it is to keep the garlands fresh.

I also visited the Gandhi museum which told the story of how Britain gained its Indian territories in a balanced way and went on to detail the story of the road to Independence and Gandhi's role therein. Madurai was the place where Gandhi resolved to thenceforth wear a dhoti loincloth and, because of this, after his assasination the museum here was given his bloodstained dhoti to display. Martin Luther King is said to have visited the Gandhi museum here and to have been inspired by his visit to make use of a policy of Civil Disobedience.

Next to the Gandhi Museum was the Government Museum which, unfortunately, was closed because it was a Friday. The Gandhi Museum closes on Mondays. I was however able to look round the outside exhibits which included an anomalous dinosaur appearing to threaten a row of ancient statues.

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